delicatessen

[George Thompson]

I turned up the item below while reading the [New York] Sun the other day.

        . . . the "delicatessen" at 177 Bowery. . . .  The Sun, October 25, 1879, p. 1, col. 3

The earliest entry in OED is 1889, except for an occurrence that it supposes to be unassimilated German.
Delicacies or relishes for the table; esp. attrib., in delicatessen shop, store.  b. ellipt. A delicatessen shop.
[1877 E. S. DALLAS Kettner's Bk. of Table 399 A house which abounds in foreign dainties of all sorts{em}Lingner's Delicatessen Handlung, 46, Old Compton Street, Soho.] 1889 Kansas Times & Star 7 Nov., Burglars broke into Blake's delicatessen store..and..made an awful mess of the juicy stuff, canned and bottled. 1893 Harper's Mag. Apr. 660 They [sc. Germans in New York] maintain..their delicatessen shops and pork butchers. ***

Checking various Proquest files, I find:
        . . . sausages, sauerkraut and other delicatessen. . . .  New York Times, March 27, 1875. p. 3

        A liberal rule for calculation in laying in supplies at Quebec is to allow thirty cents for each ration, on the basis of two served to every man of the party each day for ordinary stores, . . . and for what the Germans call delicatessen. . . .     Scribner's Monthly, May 1877. Vol. XIV., Iss. No. 1.; p. 46?[the last page of the article]

1884:   European Hotel, Restaurant, and Delicatessen.  [in St. Louis]   Colman's Rural World, March 20, 1884. Vol. 37, Iss. 12; p. 96

So the Sun's passage is the earliest in the sense of a shop, and the 1875 & 1877 citations antedate the sense of a comestible.

The Proquest databases offer 2 other citations that are still earlies, but the first is the name of a shop in Germany and the second is unassimilated German.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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